The new SR - Your ideas

As for things that I have enjoyed.1. reading logs of people using the supplements2. Reading reviews of real world results, and the discussion that comes with it3. Writing reviews has been educational as I had to look more into ingredients4. The back and forth between members when it was positive. (sorry I am old, I don't have time for some things)

I have been reading the comments in this section, and here are my thoughts.

I am on the site because I found what I believed to be more truthful reviews. I occasionally had some issues with "old timers" as they where kind of sarcastic to people who where new. The problem with most things is 90%? of questions have been asked. 5%? of people answer them so they get frustrated and snippy. Now I am that "old timer" and I try and not fall into the same trap. Every time the site has changed you had people who "took their ball and went home". That is and will be a reality. I haven't liked all the changes but they did make me do certain things differently. No matter how you set up the program you have to remember that you are asking for our time for free. I remember Chef saying at one time that he makes more an hour than any "Free" supplement he received cost. I tend to agree, however I know that their are people on here who are not in that boat. I know some people get frustrated when the higher level people "take" all the good stuff. Well, I was ranked 3rd (thanks rob for knocking me down one, ha ha. no hard feelings) guess what? I didn't get all the products I wanted. Sometimes because Seaver or workout guru or war took them. Sometimes because I already had a product and in my view it wasn't fair for me to take it. No matter the system someone will find a way to work it to their advantage. Tiger fitness now offers reward points for writing reviews, (much shorter reviews). I buy from them but haven't contributed. I might down the line, but the incentive isn't really big enough to get me to try "new" products that I don't know about. As for substantial discount, it would have to be well over 25%, because I can wait and get that from most sites for doing nothing. I hope that going forward the website continues to provide the community that has developed. I hope it gets back to doing reviews. (maybe just post the conclusion with a link to full review, which I assume you have already looked at but it was a thought to shorten them). I would also like to see the logs jump up in participation, they offered a look into the training other people where doing and sometimes something new to me.

I've only been here for a few months and have thoroughly enjoyed participating and interacting.

If there's a new site or a new version of this site coming and it wipes out everything from here, essentially gives it a clean slate, why would anyone come to that site? You know how long it's going to take for all these products to be re-reviewed? People came here for the amount of reviews on a wide array of products from a wide variety of companies, some "mainstream" some not. If your new site gets more hits on google, people are going to come there and laugh because it's just going to be another supplement forum or site, no different from anything else out there. So while, in theory you'll show up more on google, the content that's here now (if it all goes away) won't be available to all this google traffic so then why are they coming here? Sure the diehards will continue to review and many, myself included will review the same products again but it will take so much time to accumulate all the great info that's already here.

We're programmed to be comfortable, we get used to what we like and stick with that. Change means uncertainty, no one likes uncertain times. Every time Facebook, google, youtube etc make some big changes, there's an uproar afterwards from the hardcore community that liked what they were familiar with.

Everyone wants things to improve but they don't want things to change. I haven't been able to figure out how to do that yet.

SDS1582,

We've already been through a lot of this. Please read through both of the threads. There's a very small number of returning visitors. To get this site back on track, we need to get the google rankings back, there's no other way around it.

Hello, I have been a member with this site for 8 years and just wanted to add my two cents.

Firstly, I don’t think ripping the band off quickly and stopping certain functions of this site was the best idea. If you want to ask for feedback, ultimately make changes etc that’s great, but keep it operating business as usual or gradually phase out certain functionality.

I feel that the Troopers program is great, but being a Trooper should come with requirements of more invlolvement in the site. For example, having to log the product as it was in the past that reps used to require for free product. Also, I think the badge of being a Trooper shouldn’t be passed out like candy.

And I am guilty of this on more than one occasion, it shouldn’t take 100 days to review a product. That timeline should be reduced.

Not sure what the future will bring for this site. I hope it’s successful and the decisions made are well thought out, otherwise you may have a situation where many exit stage left.

Let's be honest, this site is likely not coming back. No TROOPer program and what brands would want to participate/sponsor when almost all of them got burned with people abandoning their TROOP product reviews on items sent for free? Thousands of dollars of supplements basically vanished from the brands with nothing to show for it. How can those relationships be repaired with a new site?

Pretty much, I can't see any sort of way this works, maybe I'll be presently surprised but doubt it. It's a shame really, I was able to both try new products I wouldn't have tried because of this website but also educate myself better as well and make smarter decisions on what supplements to take and how to be utilize funds. Seems like this process has been worse than starting from scratch, you've lost pretty much all your core membership and peeed off all the companies who participated in a completely foreseeable way. If I was NutraBio, PES, SteelFit, VMI, or anyone else, why would you put resources into this again?